kingdom 1

28092009

I found some xeroxes of paintings JOHN WATKISS had done in the late nineties for THE EMPEROR’S NEW GROOVE, or – KINGDOM OF THE SUN – as it was called at that time. john painted them in the same size as the TARZAN pieces, approx. 80 x 40 cm, all acrylics. different from the more action loaded TARZAN jungle scenes he played here a lot with interesting compositions and light/shadows. there must be at least 30 or 40 of these paintings, hopefully in the archives.

I am a former storyboard artist from Primal Screen in Atlanta, Georgia. I just discovered your blog from a friend this very night. It’s almost a religious experience (getting weird here!) seeing the production art from these works.
Your time/efforts don’t fall onto blind eyes – I’m invigorated to stay up all night drawing! THANK YOU.

When’s the last time you’ve watched “The Hudsucker Proxy” by the Coens? Though it has a huge story band-aid on it, it is truly a landmark work. Plus, it’s got some kickin’ cinematography, too (though not near as compelling as the late Conrad Hall’s work in “Road to Perdition”).

Hudsucker Proxy is a terrible film, and the design is masturbatory beyond belief. Even the Coen brothers think so. It’s almost as bad as the film City of Lost Children, from both a story AND design point of view.

it actually reminds me more of Dreamworks’ “El Dorado” film.
El Dorado had much more darker and somewhat violent scenes compared to Emperor’s New Groove. Since Emperor’s New Groove went more to a much lighter mood, with the comedy and all, it actually surprised me that the production of the film had a more darker feel to it.

I love these images, and the ones he did for Tarzan as well. I remember being obsessed with them in the 1990s when they’d show up in the Disney Animation preview displays. The future of animation was so exciting then…

I’m actually a big fan of “New Groove”, but I’d kinda like to see this film as well…

I used to swing by disney every week to see what John had been up to and then off out for pint.
I saw all these, plus Atlantis, but nothing has ever knocked my socks off like the hundreds of Tarzan paintings which were up in all the corridors. It was stunning.
There were a couple of spectacularly huge ones too, and Zoltan as well.
I was hoping they’d do a book of all of them, but sadly they’ll just likely remain buried in the vault!

ABOUT ME

my name is hans bacher, – I work as production designer in the animation film industry. for the last 40 years I lived and worked in duesseldorf, london, paris, los angeles, manila and tokyo. now I am professor for film-design at the nanyang techn. university in singapore.